His rod-born fount and Castaly The songs which both thy countries sing: Ah! let the sweet birds of the Lord With earth's waters make accord; Teach how the crucifix may be Carven from the laurel-tree, Fruit of the Hesperides Burnish take on Eden-trees, The Muses' sacred grove be wet With the red dew of Olivet, And Sappho lay her burning brows In white Cecilia's lap of snows! Thy childhood must have felt the stings Flasked in the grape the wine they knew, The loom which mortal verse affords, Thy mien bewrayeth through that wrong LE MAUVAIS LARRON (SUGGESTED BY WILLETTE'S PICTURE) THE moorland waste lay hushed in the dusk of the second day, Till a shuddering wind and shrill moaned up through the twilight gray; Like a wakening wraith it rose from the grave of the buried sun, And it whirled the sand by the tree (there was never a tree but one —) But the tall bare bole stood fast, unswayed with the mad wind's stress, And a strong man hung thereon in his pain and his nakedness. His feet were nailed to the wood, and his arm strained over his head; 'T was the dusk of the second day, and yet was the man not dead. The cold blast lifted his hair, but his limbs were set and stark, And under their heavy brows his eyes stared into the dark: He looked out over the waste, and his eyes were as coals of fire, Lit up with anguish and hate, and the flame of a strong desire. The dark blood sprang from his wounds, the cold sweat stood on his face, For over the darkening plain came a rider riding apace. Her rags flapped loose in the wind; the last of the sunset glare Flung dusky gold on her brow and her bosom broad and bare. She was haggard with want and woe, on a jaded steed astride, And still, as it staggered and strove, she smote on its heaving side, Till she came to the limbless tree where the tortured man hung highA motionless crooked mass on a yellow streak in the sky. "'Tis I-I am here, Antoine - I have found thee at last," she said; "O the hours have been long, but long! and the minutes as drops of lead. Have they trapped thee, the full-fed flock, thou wert wont to harry and spoil? Do they laugh in their town secure o'er their measures of wine and oil? Ah God! that these hands might reach where they loll in their rich array; Ah God, that they were but mine, all mine, to mangle and slay! How they shuddered and shrank, erewhile, at the sound of thy very name, When we lived as the gray wolves live, whom torture nor want may tame : And thou but a man! and still a scourge and a terror to men, Yet only my lover to me, my dear, in the rare days then. O years of revel and love! ye are gone as the wind goes by, He is snared and shorn of his strength, and the anguish of hell have I I am here, O love, at thy feet; I have ridden far and fast To gaze in thine eyes again, and to kiss thy lips at the last.' She rose to her feet and stood upright on the gaunt mare's back, And she pressed her full red lips to his that were strained and black. "Good-night, for the last time now good Then the wind raise up wi' a maen, ('T was a waefu' wind, an' weet), Like a deid saul wud wi' pain, Like a bairnie wild wi' freit ; We steppit oot owre the sand Where an unco' tide had been, For there, in the wind an' weet, My Jean an' her weans lay cauld at my feet, In the mirk an' the saft sea-mist. An' it 's O for my bonny Jean! An' it 's O for my bairnies twa, It's O an' O for the watchet een An' the steps that are gane awa' Awa' to the Silent Place, Or ever I saw nor wist, Though I wot we twa went face to face Through the mirk an' the saft sea-mist. HEREAFTER SHALL we not weary in the windless days Forlorn amid the pearl and ivory, Give us again the crazy clay-built nest, Our fairy gold of evening in the West; |